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Tag Archives: #LSBU10DoT

In total I had 81 LSBU members of staff register for the course which I was very pleased with. This is quick blog post mainly aimed at the participants of the course – really just to give you a feel of what others thought about the course. In terms of evaluating the #LSBU10DoT course I have initially looked at three sources of data; end of course survey results, Twitter analytics and intranet metrics:

RESULTS OF END OF COURSE SURVEY:

As of the 11th May (the survey will remain open for another week) 15 participants of the #LSBU10DoT course completed the end of course evlauation questionnaire (response rate of 19% – which is not too bad for an online survey). Here is a brief summary of the results.

5 out of 15 completed the course. Those that didn’t finish were still catching up, too busy with work and couldnt find the time as the course became ‘less intuitive’. 100% of respondants thought the course clearly demonstarted how Twitter could be used in a professional context. The vast majority 80% and above thought that the content of the 10 days was ‘just the right amount of detail’. Although there were a few comments; ‘I felt there was a little too much text – but that’s probably because I am a relatively advanced
user!’, ‘I got lost at hashtags and all my previous anxieties about twitter just seemed reinforced’, I’ve entered ‘just enough detail’ because depending in your level of experience you might need more or less detail. What you provided enabled more experienced users to be selective but covered all bases for less experienced users’.

They were genarally happy with the topics covered although there were a couple of suggestions of what could have been included, such as, ‘How Twitter can be used with blogging’ and ‘Could we have a bit on institutional policies, what is/isn’t appropriate for LSBU staff etc?’.

In terms of the mode of delivery one persone commented that they ‘Found it difficult to access the intranet off campus’ and another said ‘Thought it worked quite well – but nothing showed up in yammer – was that correct? & would
be good to know how to access the content again if one wanted to (can you download a PDF nfor printing and reading for example?)’

8 respondant said that changed the way they used twitter as result of the course; ‘Exploring use of lists (jury’s out) & have changed some settings thanks to the painstakinglyclear instructions within the programme!’, ‘I will utilise lists, moments and schedule tweets from now onwards’, ‘My bio is more useful now and I have changed my profile picture’ and ‘ More thoughtful about my approach to twitter’.

Finally I had three overall responces about the course that were very positive:

‘Well done! – thought it worked well! But perhaps a face to face element over a mid point
lunch time would bring it alive? (& would build support more of a ‘community’ aspect ?)’

‘Thank you so much for the lessons. It is a very useful resource which will be extremely useful or those who missed the LSBU10DoT I have enjoyed the daily lessons and will continue to improve my twitter experience for myself and others’

‘Overall, glad I took part. I’m just very slow at this- perhaps for those like me there could be a follow up in a couple of weeks – for any questions that have raised during this time’

Obviously its really pleasing to get such positive comments and I like the idea of maybe doing a F2F sesion, maybe half way through the course to bring people together and share experiences.

TWITTER ACTIVITY:

This chart above is from the @LSBU10DoT twitter acount showing the number of ‘Impressions’ over the duration of the course. ‘Impressions’ are the number of times tweets are viewed – judging by the numbers it wasnt just participants who had enrolled on the course who were veiwing them. In fact the most popular tweet below was about a best practice workshop:

This is interesting because it was advertising a F2F work shop in the university that didnt have anything to do with the #LSBU10DoT course.

QUICK ANALYSIS OF THE INTRANET PAGES (thanks to Alice Saunders for these figures):

Av time on page – an engagement metric; how long to people spend using the material.

Data

PAGE

VISITS

BOUNCE RATE

AV TIME ON PAGE

Day 1

108

53%

03:55

Day 2

46

69%

2.18

Day 3

45

36%

03:42

Day 4

31

71%

1.24

Day 5

30

54%

2.34

Day 6

26

56%

02:50

Day 7

25

33%

02:25

Day 8

23

73%

01:37

Day 9

11

100%

02:22

Day 10

9

100%

01.31

Homepage

51

39%

01:37

Best performing days in terms of engagement were: Day 3 and Day 7 and Day 1. This may be because the day’s content particularly reflected what the audience wanted/needed to know.

Visits steadily decline as the week progresses. However, most days follow the pattern of on-the-day spike and then some additional visits collected over the next 4 days. So, some of the latter days will still be getting new traffic now, as people use the content in their time.

Remember low bounce rate is good. So, the best performers in terms of sticky content were: Day 3 and Day 7.

Day 3: was particularly rich in content – with a lot of tailored information specific to academia. Hence the high engagement.

The homepage generally had a lower bounce rate than the article pages; looks pretty. Perhaps we should have included graphics at the top of the articles for more visual impact on the individual task pages.

CONCLUSION:

Overall the data above in terms of the survey results, intranet metrics and Twitter analytics, they give a very positive impression of the course. Generally particiapants were very content with the course content. It could appeal to both experienced and new users of Twitter. They like the way it was targeted for an academic audience and it seemed to fit well into their working day. They became more competent and professional users of Twitter. On the downside I was slightly disappointed with the level of Twitter activity, having previously run the course at another much smaller university I noticed a much less engaged and participatory culture on this version of the course. There are a number of possible reasons for this and the evaluation survey does suggest that some participants found the content a bit too complex and that it was less easy to access the information on the intranet off campus. With a few changes I think it would be worth running the course again or even thinking about other versions focusing on Blogging or other learning technology tools like Moodle or Mahara.

Like this:

Well the last two weeks went really quickly. Thank you to everyone who took part in the 10 Days of Twitter at London South Bank University.

Here is some great advice from Mark Warnes who ran a similar course at Anglia Ruskin University:

Here are some ideas what to do next:

Tweet about new publications
These can be journal articles, blogs, website updates, etc. It is a good idea to have access to an online version of the full publication, or to an abstract, so that the tweet can point somewhere for followers to get more information.

Tweet about relevant new developments
You could inform people about new government legislation, relevant publications or activities by other organisations in your research area. This could aid your own work in several ways such as by increasing your collaborative network, raising interest in your research area and perhaps leading to greater funding opportunities.

Use Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to make your area of interest, and the materials you produce more visible. You should not hold back about creating your own hashtags if no relevant ones exist, but remember what we covered on Day 6.

‘Crowd Sourcing’
Twitter is a great way of providing opportunities for ‘crowd sourcing’ you work, getting people to engage in and help you with your work is often possible. Some researchers have been successful in using Twitter to get actual funding.

New Audiences
Twitter is a very good medium for helping you to reach out to non-academic audiences, such as governmental organisation, business, NGOs etc.

Impact
Twitter can be used to as a metric for Impact, by collecting data on activity related to your project or work. Useful data to collect includes changes in:

The number of followers you have
The names of those who could be useful for future collaboration
Invitations to write a publication or speak at events, which have come via Twitter
Number of visits to your own publications via Twitter
The number of Impressions your activity has generated

Publicity

Twitter is a great way to raise awareness of events your Organisation or Department may be hosting. You can then LiveChat the event to further raise awareness. Several of my colleagues monitor Twitter chat from events they can’t physically attend.

Communication

Twitter is of course a communication medium, but it can actually be of great use in keeping the members of the sub-groups within your organisation up to date with your activities. You can also use Twitter to communicate more easily with students, researchers and part-time staff who may not always be kept up to date with activities through normal channels.

Twitter and Blogging

These two forms of social media work very well together. It is a good idea to keep your blogs managed in such a way that the essential content of each blog can easily be tweeted.

Course evaluation survey.

If you haven’t already done so can you can you complete the course evaluation survey (it will only take a couple of minutes)